Make America Great Again Original Reagan

President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Mail)

"Make America Peachy Again."

The iv words that would aid propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration built-in years before, when hardly anyone only Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the U.s..

It happened on November. 7, 2012, the day after Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crunch, i that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit down in the Oval Office again.

But on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at hand.

And in typical fashion, the first thing he thought well-nigh was how to brand information technology.

One later some other, phrases popped into his caput. "Nosotros Volition Make America Swell." That one did non have the right band. Then, "Brand America Groovy." But that sounded like a slight to the country.

And so, it hit him: "Brand America Great Again."

"I said, 'That is and so good.' I wrote information technology down," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-house. We have many lawyers. I accept got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'See if you can take this registered and trademarked.' "

(Alice Li/The Washington Post)

5 days later, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to utilise "Brand America Cracking Again" for "political action committee services, namely, promoting public sensation of political problems and fundraising in the field of politics." He enclosed a $325 registration fee.

His was a vision that ran against the conventional wisdom of the time — in fact, information technology was "much the opposite," Trump said.

To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would accept to sand off its edges, become kinder and more than inclusive. "Brand America Great Again" was divisive and astern-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.

It sounded like a expiry wish.

But Trump had seen something dissimilar in the country, and in the daily lives of its struggling citizens.

"I felt that jobs were hurting," he said. "I looked at the many types of affliction our land had, and whether it's at the border, whether it'south security, whether information technology's law and order or lack of law and order. Then, of grade, you get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would exist skilful?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Great Over again.' "

Democrats slammed it.

"If you're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm not your candidate. I call back there is more correct than wrong," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we accept to make America keen. I think we have to brand America greater."

Her husband, erstwhile president Beak Clinton, went so far equally to declare it a racist canis familiaris whistle.

"I'm really onetime enough to remember the practiced old days, and they weren't all that good in many ways," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll give you America groovy over again' is if you're a white Southerner, y'all know exactly what it means, don't you lot?"

The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.West. Bush-league had used "Let's Make America Great Once more" in their 1980 entrada — a fact that Trump maintained he did non know until virtually a yr ago.

"Only he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.

His decision to merits legal ownership reflected a man of affairs's listen-prepare. "I think I'm somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.

Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upward of 800 trademarks in more than eighty countries.

The trademark became effective on July 14, 2015, a month after Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was actually using it for the purposes spelled out in his awarding.

Having won the trademark, Trump was ambitious in protecting his thought. When his GOP primary rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "brand America great again" into their own speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off cease-and-desist letters.

Trump's red trucker cap featuring the Make America Great Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Mail)

More than just a hat

Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The one constant, information technology often seemed, was "Brand America Great Again."

"I didn't know it was going to catch on similar information technology did. Information technology's been astonishing," Trump said. "The hat, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't you lot say?"

There were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his entrada was spending more than on "Make America Great Again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or boob tube ads.

"An appropriate icon for his failing campaign," the Washington Examiner'south Philip Wegmann wrote in late October. "The millions of hats will make excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'south unimaginative and conventional simply well-oiled political machine."

Trump saw the hats as a fundraising and advert vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Style section — during Style Calendar week, no less.

"In the Mode section, it was the ornamentation — what exercise you call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory of the year. You know the hat. Y'all'd encounter people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing ruby-red hats," he exulted.

Equally is often the example, Trump's description is more a little hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "old-school" caps had become "the ironic must-have mode accessory of the summer," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny power to capture the current absurdist political moment."

None of which fazed the celebrity billionaire who had debuted the hats by wearing one during a July 2022 trip to the Mexican border — or the legions of supporters who raced to snap them up. Trump had designed them himself, he said. The basic models sold through his campaign website were priced at $25.

"How many did nosotros sell? Does anyone know? Millions!" Trump said in the interview.

"It was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by x to one. It was knocked off by others. But information technology was a slogan, and every time somebody buys one, that's an advertisement."

Nonetheless many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Great Again" caught on. It was the nigh effective kind of political message, seize with teeth-sized and visceral.

"Information technology really inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, it meant jobs. Information technology meant manufacture, and meant military force. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much."

[When was America great? It depends on who yous are.]

That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton's campaign — for all its poll testing and high-priced advice from Madison Artery — struggled to clear.

Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a full general-election campaign slogan earlier settling on "Stronger Together," according to an email from the account of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.

What they were up against was nada short of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama'south chief political strategist. Trump "understood the market that he was trying to attain. You can't deny him that. He was very focused from the start on who he was talking to."

While Clinton carried the popular vote, Trump lined up the states he needed to win what mattered: the electoral college.

"In terms of galvanizing the marketplace that he was talking to," Axelrod said, "he did information technology unmarried-mindedly and ingeniously."

Thinking reelection

Halfway through his interview with The Washington Mail, Trump shared a fleck of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.

"Are you set up?" he said. " 'Continue America Not bad,' exclamation betoken."

"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.

Two minutes later, one arrived.

"Will you trademark and register, if you would, if y'all like it — I think I like it, right? Do this: 'Keep America Great,' with an exclamation indicate. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Great,' " Trump said.

"Got it," the lawyer replied.

That flake of business concern out of the way, Trump returned to the interview.

"I never thought I'd exist giving [you] my expression for four years [from now]," he said. "But I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be so amazing. Information technology'southward the just reason I give information technology to you. If I was, similar, ambiguous almost information technology, if I wasn't sure about what is going to happen — the country is going to exist swell."

All of which raises the questions: How can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it fifty-fifty mean?

"Being a great president has to do with a lot of things, just one of them is being a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And nosotros're going to show the people as we build up our military, nosotros're going to display our armed services.

"That war machine may come up marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military machine may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our military," he added.

Just Trump acknowledged that slogans and showmanship will not be the ultimate tests of whether the country is "great again."

The president-elect has an aggressive to-do list for the next four years: building stronger borders, keeping the country condom against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Act, replacing it with something amend, promoting excellence in applied science and science, investing in modernistic infrastructure.

Ultimately, information technology will be up to the people for whom "Make America Dandy Once more" was a covenant, non a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived up to his promise.

"I think they take to feel it," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, only you still have to produce the results."

"Honestly, yous haven't seen annihilation still. Wait till you see what happens, starting next Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Bang-up things."

Read more:

Trump's Cabinet nominees keep contradicting him

Surprisingly, Trump inauguration shapes up to be a relatively depression-central matter

'Finally. Someone who thinks like me.'

Alice Crites contributed to this study.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-donald-trump-came-up-with-make-america-great-again/2017/01/17/fb6acf5e-dbf7-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html

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